


How The Blood Sings

by mllelaurel



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bloodplay, Broken People Being Good for Each Other in Their Own Weird Ways, D/s, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Fearplay, Implied/Referenced Past Emotional Abuse, Knifeplay, Risk Aware Consensual Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:07:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26066257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mllelaurel/pseuds/mllelaurel
Summary: “Then what is it that you desire?” He lets the knife dig in, blood beading on its tip. Healing follows immediately in its wake, a sliver of something good eked out of Lamine’s damnable Crest. Some might not mind a visible scar such as this, but he doubts Bernadetta would be among their number.“I want this,” she says at last, her voice quiet but clear as a cool mountain spring.
Relationships: Jeritza von Hrym/Bernadetta von Varley
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26
Collections: FE3H Kink Meme





	How The Blood Sings

“Yet still you do not fear me.” The Lady Countess Bernadetta von Varley is naked beneath him and the sight of her leaves Jeritza breathless in awe. 

Her eyes are dark and huge, her lower lip quivering. “S-sure I’m scared of you.” She squirms and whines, grinding helplessly against the thigh he’d wedged between hers so as to keep them parted. 

“Oh?” He runs the knife along her cheek, and she shudders. “Is that why you cling to me so? Do you think, perhaps, I will protect you from my own darker natures?” 

She shakes her head, bobbly and wild. “N-not that you protecting me isn’t nice, but…”

“Then what is it that you desire?” He lets the knife dig in, blood beading on its tip, streaking down her face like a tear. Healing follows immediately in its wake, a sliver of something good eked out of Lamine’s damnable Crest. Some might not mind a visible scar such as this, but he doubts Bernadetta would be among their number. 

She goes still, rabbit-frozen and breathing shallow. 

“Well?” he asks, trailing the tip of the knife down her pale throat. Careful here, ever so careful. Some wounds are too wretched to be easily undone. 

Her lips move silently. He lies in wait, a wolf stalking its prey. 

“I want this,” she says at last, her voice quiet but clear as a cool mountain spring. 

Such earnesty shall have its reward. A fine cut, just above her breast, his mouth following eagerly after. Her blood is coppery-sweet on his tongue, more welling as he laps it up. She squeezes her eyes shut, tossing her head from side to side, hands twisting in the sheets. 

“Will you beg me for more?” he asks gravely. This is touch and go for her, he knows, far more than any pain he might inflict. She’s never had an easy time of wanting, let alone asking, let alone venturing beyond. Still, pride has never been and never shall be among her favored vices, and of that he can make use. 

It’s difficult to tell whether the tiny ‘nnnnn’ she lets out is a moan or a denial. Let it be the former until proven otherwise, he thinks, and pinches her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Her cry rises in pitch as he pulls and twists. 

“So melodic even now,” he says. “You always were a fine singer.” 

“Stop making fun of me!” Ah, now he gets her grumpy, skittish side. Compliments are always dangerous with her, another legacy left by her boor of a father. The new regime has served the Count well, Jeritza thinks. Exile in Dagda, stripped of all resources and allies, far, far away from the wife and daughter he once terrorized, is a fine reward for a louse. 

Jeritza knows not whether he can ameliorate this damage, but he can try, and so he lowers his lips to Bernadetta’s ear. “I am the only one who hears this song, am I not? Let me then be the sole judge of it.” 

She sighs like she’s expelling all air from her lungs. He drags the blade down her sternum, between her breasts, drawing shivers from her without making a single true cut. 

“I… I can’t,” she murmurs after a moment. “Please, I… Just do it, okay? Just do it!” Her voice rises the more she speaks. 

Jeritza laughs. “Are you giving me an order, my Lady?”

“N-no, I…” 

“Would you like to? A fantasy, perhaps, one which remains yet unfulfilled?”

Bernadetta worries her lower lip. Ah, so he’s not entirely missed his mark then. An interesting exploration—for a later date. For now, she is _his_ , and he will make fine use of her pleasure. 

He digs his fingers into her thigh, pushing one of her legs up until it strains to further expose delicate flesh. She goes pliant in his grip, arching her throat and watching his every move behind lowered lashes. He sets the knife aside, a brief respite as he drags two fingers through her folds, knowing full well that the gentleness of the touch will throw her off-balance. His fingers glisten wet when he withdraws them—easy enough to work them inside her on his next pass, circling the tiny bud of her clitoris with the pad of his thumb. 

The next part would be easier if she were bound, but genuine gut-wrenching fear has taken this option permanently off the table. It’s one thing to make her scream and tremble, to leave bruises she will poke smilingly the next morning, and quite another to reopen a festering old wound. 

Jeritza pins one knee in place with his shoulder and reclaims the knife. Realization dawns, and she whimpers, muscles pulling tight. “No, please!”

He keeps a steady hand. “Do you mean that?” One particular word from her, and everything stops, a word she has not deigned to use so far. 

“Please…” she says. The codeword stays silent, trapped behind her teeth. Truly, it’s unsurprising how much she loves to plead. He’ll never stifle her voice, never berate her for it. How could he when every plea, every helpless cry, stirs a conflagration in his blood? She may never believe how beautiful she is with tears welling in her eyes and color rising high in her cheeks, but he has seared this memory of her into his retinas, forever precious. 

She grants him leave to let loose the cruelest parts of himself and sees him man instead of monster despite it. He’d thought her mad for it once, this woman who fled the world and flattened her back against the wall to avoid a careless glance, yet who approached the infamous Death Knight without fear. Let them be mad together, then, his darkness and her own lighter shade forever entwined. 

It’s with utmost reverence that he lowers the knife to her tender inner thigh, draws the thinnest line, sharp as fire where it parts her skin. 

She shrieks then, one hand flailing to clutch his hair in a death grip, the other gouging marks into his chest. He knows she will apologize for those later, though he savors the pain as much as she. 

Another healing spell, as her cries break into sobs and her pussy clenches tight around his fingers. He fucks her through her climax, rough and relentless. Flint sparks fire as he drags her to the precipice again, gushing and oversensitive, and lets her fall screaming. 

_One more push,_ he thinks. She’s panting, near insensate, her hair messy and stuck to her face. Jeritza gives her a few breaths to recover before laying the flat of the blade between her legs, a hanging threat and a promise he would never fulfill. The steel has already taken the heat of her skin. Her fluids smear its finish. Above him, her face has gone white amid the flush. 

“You know the word,” he tells her. “Let me hear you say it.” 

She squeaks, words strangling in her throat. He holds his position, watching as her lips soundlessly form the syllables. Another man might be tempted to give her quarter, count the order as obeyed, but he is no such man. No man at all some days, but a spectre, a blood covered blade, death riding down its prey. 

“Enbarr,” she whispers at last. Fódlan’s capital and his sure signal to withdraw. The surname ‘Varley,’ had she spoken it, would have been a full-stop command. He would have cloaked himself in humanity once more at the hearing of it and laid his menace at her feet. With ‘Enbarr,’ she merely asks him to stay his hand, and he complies. 

The blade withdraws, and Jeritza kisses her lips. “Well done,” he tells her. 

“Are you finished with me?” she asks hesitantly. 

He’s careful in his reply. To say yes would be seen as pushing her away, and she is worth so much more than that, deserves so much better. No one shall ever toy with her and cast her aside. He will stand sentinel to that silent oath. “I will never be finished with you,” he tells her. 

Some tiny, ridgid muscle in her jaw relaxes at last. “Oh?” she asks, almost playful. “What will you do with me in that case?”

He allows himself a rictus grin of a smile. “I will make you mine,” he says. As though she is not his already. As though he is not hers in equal measure. 

She reaches up to touch his face. Flames, her hands are so incredibly tiny. Who would believe there is strength in these fingers, let alone death in the archer’s calluses? Her rage is as beautiful as her kindness—and she fears both in equal measure. Jeritza only wishes he could say he didn’t understand those terrible, cringing impulses all too well. That it has been too long since the light of day and the darkness inside his mind threatened to rend him between them and swallow him whole. 

The darkness, he has learned, cannot be slain. No mortal man nor woman can wrestle Death itself into submission. But united as one, they can claim that darkness. What cannot be slaughtered may still be ruled. Once he had shied away from his desire for her, dreaded the inevitability of her hurt souring and hardening into well-deserved disdain. That day has yet to arrive, and the sight of her naked and aroused inflames him more with every passing moment. 

His length slides along the folds of her pussy, the head nudging her where she opens. Even from without, he can feel her _pulse_ , gloriously wet and scorching hot. It’s maddening not to plunge inside her right this instant. To wait instead of throwing her legs over his shoulders and slamming into her over and over again, until her screams fill the room and her nails scrape his back bloody.

The first time they tried this, he could scarce get a finger inside her, she was so tight from the nerves. He’d plied her with his tongue and she’d moaned, hiding her face in her arms. But it wasn’t until he dug his teeth into the dainty tendon of her neck that wetness dewed her thighs and slicked the depths of her. Only then did she beg him to turn her on her hands and knees, to take her from behind as she chewed on a pillow to muffle her cries. 

Now she blossoms like a flower, open and lush before him. Jeritza sinks effortlessly into the silken heat of her. He only needs one hand to pin her wrists above her head. He’ll give her no room to hide from him this time. Every one of her expressions, be it pleasure or pain, is his to consume.

His free hand draws the blade along her ribs. Crimson spatters and smears against the sheets, vivid as the paint with which she daubs his coat onto her canvas. Her thighs quiver, and every breath is a yowl, long notes breaking into a dry-throated staccato of ‘ah, ah, ah!’ She squeezes around him on every stroke, melts into the slide, grips him again. She’s close, he can feel it. All it takes is a few hard thrusts, stretching her wide open around him, and the telltale flutter of her pussy spring-winds to a rhythmic vice. She comes with a high-pitched squeal, heady as wine before the rush of blood in Jeritza’s ears drowns all sound, dragging him deep into its riptide. 

***

Somewhere in the afterglow, he’s released her wrists. Her hands are in his hair, unraveling the queue. He’s managed to hold on to the knife, which is fortunate. Neither of them would care to step on it when they get out of bed. It will want cleaning later, but for now he simply drops it on the nightstand, prying his own fingers off the hilt. 

Slowly, painstakingly, Jeritza re-arranges the two of them, taking care not to let go of Bernadetta in the process. She craves touch in the aftermath. So does he, if he is truly honest. Her skin is sheened in sweat as he runs his hands over it. 

“Did I hurt you?” he asks. Some of the cuts will need immediate attention. Others are well enough on their own, and she always refuses to let him heal the bruises purpling on her hips. 

“Mm,” she says, dreamy and content. “Maybe a little?”

“Good?” he asks, barely a question. 

She nods against his chest. Some nights she is uninclined to talk. This, it seems, is one of those nights. He’ll coax her to drink some water when she can, but for now it’s the contact that truly matters. 

He wishes he could tell her how lovely she was in her throes. How splendid she is at this very moment. Someday, she will believe the truth of his words if he has to burn the world to make it happen. For now, he pulls her closer. “You were very brave,” he tells her instead. 

She ‘hmm’s. “I guess. You make it easy.”

Her words strike him sharp as daggers, bleeding something dark from the cavity of his chest, filling it with light and air. “So do you,” he tells her. “So do you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following kink meme prompt:
>
>> Jeritza can't get off without at least a little violence, so it's lucky for him Bernadetta is so invigorated by taking damage. He's had partners before who don't mind the pain, but none who seem to come alive under his knife the way Bernadetta does.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to [Letterblade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade) for beta. <3


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